Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Up-cycled T-Shirt Skirt Tutorial

I had recently gone through my closet and found a stack of tanks and t-shirts that were immodest. So, they were thrown out of my closet onto a pile in the hopes I could salvage the material at least.

Here are the three I chopped up the other day:

Notice the grey one has an elastic in there. And, it fits around my waist perfectly. Yes! One less step.

(If yours does not have an elastic in there, you can make a casing by folding it over by a 1/4", press, fold again by 1 1/4" and sew on the edge, leaving a hole to thread the elastic through. Stitch the hole shut after the elastic has been threaded through, and the ends sewn together using a zig zag stitch.)

So, first of all, I cut the two colored tanks so that I had four 8.5" wide pieces.

And, I seam-ripped and cut the top off the grey shirt. It ended up being a 15" long 'skirt' on its own--not quite modest enough for me and pretty boring--just grey. I did leave the hem on since I didn't feel like seam ripping that.

I cut the four colored pieces open on one seam so I could sew the pieces together into one continuous piece in each color.

Now, with right sides together, I sewed the purple onto the grey, using a 1/4" seam allowance.

So, I had this:

*Skip this step, but this was part of my (ahem) learning process*

Next, I played around and was going to make a layer above the purple so that it would be a sort of layered ruffle skirt. It didn't sit right, so I seam ripped the whole green/blue piece off again.

*Continue here*

And, instead, sewed it to the purple, right sides together, lining up seams and again using a 1/4" seam allowance. Much better. ﻿

But, in my seam ripping process, I got a bit of a hole in the grey fabric. That needs to be covered up.

I had cut the hems off the bottom of the colored shirts just above the stitching. I now cut just below the stitching and stitched a gathering stitch in the fold. This piece was approximately 36" x 1".

And, I gathered it.

And, sewed them together to make these ruffled flowers. To do so, you just roll the gathered fabric up into a circle, hand stitching them together.

I now have 1 large green/blue flower and 2 small purple flowers that are actually stuck together. I just rolled them up from opposite ends. ﻿

After placing them where I wanted, and cutting all threads off, I hand-stitched them to the skirt, covering the hole.

I had some company while doing so:

Voila:

A skirt made out of upcycled t-shirts.

I did not hem the bottom or finish it in anyway--the knit fabric will not fray and I *think* I like the unfinished look. If I get annoyed with it later, I can always hem it another day.

I really like wearing knit skirts--they're so comfy! And, what better way than to upcycle unused shirts!

Whew! I hope that makes sense--this is my first tutorial type post. If you have any questions, just comment and I will try to answer them!

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